The San Francisco Sheriff’s Department and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children hosted on Friday what they’re calling a “first-of-its-kind” training for law enforcement on investigating and prosecuting of missing and exploited children cases.
"As the sheriff and as a father, like all parents, we're preoccupied with safety of our children,” Mirkarimi said, saying that he’d like West Coast law enforcement to be able to be better trained, without having to wait for help from the national center in Virginia. “We can always do better.
The training, offered to about 100 law enforcement officers throughout Northern California, took place at the Federal Reserve Bank in San Francisco. And in Mirkarimi’s eyes, was just the start of better educated peace officers.
According to the Department of Justice, there was more than 1,000 percent increase in complaints of child sex trafficking from 2004 to 2008. And for missing children, there were almost 467,000 reports from the FBI last year alone.
Those numbers are unacceptable, according to Marc Klaas, whose 12-year-old daughter Polly Klaas was kidnapped and killed in 1993. He said recent techniques and technologies can better arm police to find child abductors.
